Now that Stephen Ritter and I are here together in Dallas, Worldwide is off and running and the new year is upon us, we’re both racing to the finish line on our Pedigree book. First off, let me give a big Thank You to everyone for being patient, and especially to our advertisers whose support has, and will make this project a success. When I started this back in 2003, I had no idea how much of an undertaking it is to write a book. Stephen and I work on the book only in our spare time, time which seems to be continually shrinking day to day.

So going forward, we decided now would be the perfect time to start an official pedigree thread to provide updates, ask research questions, and create a place for everyone to post thoughts, comments, etc. To start off, we pose these five questions below to anyone reading. Feel free to either respond here, or contact us privately if that is your prerogative. My email is matt@comicpedigrees.com, and Stephen’s is Stephen@wwcomics.com. The more response we get to our questions, the more questions we will post.

Comicpedigrees.com, the official website for the pedigree book has also been updated, which now includes a checklist of where we’re at with each of the 48 collections. This list will be updated as we progress with each story. Our hope is to have the book finished and out during this year’s convention season.

We’ll be checking this thread almost every day, but please give us at least a day or two to post, as we tend to get swamped at work. Stephen is leaving for the NY show on Saturday, and I’ll be at Ponscon all this weekend, followed by my trip to NY next Tuesday. Of course we’ll be set up with our huge inventory from wwcomics.com, and I’ll be doing my on-site proscreens for pressing and restoration for classicsincorporated.com. (shameless plug)

Without further ado, here are the first five questions of the thread:

1. Did anyone buy any key issues from an antique dealer couple named the Thompsons in the '70s? The collection they purchased would go on to be considered the Kansas City pedigree, which happens to be the oldest pedigree among our 48.

2. Can anyone provide scans of Kansas City books?

3. Has anyone ever seen a San Francisco pedigree copy from the Nedor/Standard/Better publisher before?

4. It appears that the Pennsylvania collection original list is lost. Does anyone know of big key issues from this collection?

5. Does anyone have contact info for Bob Gray, broker of the Twilight collection (owner of Twilight Book and Game Emporium, Syracuse, NY)?

Thanks for reading…I hope we see some interesting feedback and discussions here.